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Brett Jackson was striking out enough to the point where there was reason to be concerned going forward. He struck out almost 30% of the time in 2011. I think there was enough there. Bill James is usually optimistic with his projections. I don't think you can count on a .344 BABIP from him either. I just don't think he can make enough contact to matter. Mcnutt hasn't put up a good season since 2010. Given the concerns of both those two players and the shallowness of the 3B position I can't think of many reasons not to make that deal.

Were you saying this last year?

Saying Jackson hasn't been worth caring about for two years also just isn't true.

would have means nothing. its what will be done that is important. we can all look back and say i would have drafted trout, i would have traded for headley right before he explodes blah blah but it means nothing.
tell me who is ur headley this year that you would have done by the next off season?

Gato, your "inane rambling" comment from me came off a very condescending post by you, after it was proven Castillo was mentioned by Theo as a guy that could be in the core and you were proven wrong. What constitutes a "core" guy? No clue. You don't know either. Theo does though. And he's named 6 guys, as we know, with 2 more that are possibilities. My guess at it, is he wants a group of 22-26ish types to compose of the core and in the next couple of seasons, we'll add bigtime FA to surround it. But for me, I'd rather watch young guys with talent struggle, if it helps them longterm get to their upside, than watching a team that screams out .500. Theo wants a dozen core guys headibg into next offseason evidently. We'll know more then, as to how and who he defines a "core" member. If you're wanting an answer from your descriptions, I'd say it's fluid. We don't know enough yet to say differently. As for Castro abd Rizzo: Two best pieces we have. Not wasting away. And will be young and chesp for a while. Its either be patient or don't. You're not. I get that. But the fact is, the first time I brought up a longterm offseason plan, you actually agreed it was likely better for us and you admitted to being impatient. Oh well, everyone can change their minds, but until someone can actually post something thats both rwalistic and doable, I'll fail to see the other side of things. And no one has yet. Therefore, I'll continue to believe in our FO, who has a much longer and better track record within the game of baseball than Gato or Kyle does. And its not an insult, its fact. They are highly respected. Wgy not trust them? Because it comes off as if you think you'd do a better job than they are.

Restriction: I have to stick with a $135 million budget, which is easily consistent with what we know about their revenues and baseball operations budget. You can still easily afford the Dominican Academy and all that other organizational infrastructure with this.

Stipulation: I'll only use players I was interested in last offseason, but I get to use hindsight in how well they performed. This is to make up for the fact that I have to deal with things we didn't know at the time, like Garza getting hurt or Soto and Byrd becoming useless or having -4 Pythagorean variance. I will assume we sign the players for roughly what they ended up getting.

Stipulation 2: I'm using bWAR as the way to compare players and the net change in expected wins. It's more descriptive than fWAR and thus better for our purposes.

Step 1, let's just get this out of the way. Sign Aramis Ramirez to the deal he got with the Brewers. He wasn't nearly my first choice going into the offseason, but that deal was an insane steal. I give up the comp pick (oh the horror, I've sacrificed our whole future!), but this is a really good MLB player on a really good contract.

Sign Buehrle to the rotation for the deal he got, leave Samardzija in the pen (I know, controversial, but I believe he could be a shutdown, high-leverage reliever worth just as much as any starter). Add Dotel in addition to Camp (always been a huge Dotel fan). Leave Volstad in AAA where he belonged all year and don't jerk around Travis Wood (in general, don't be the asshat team that gives out jobs based on spring training).

Your pitching staff is now:
Garza/Buehrle/Dempster/Wood/Maholm, about 3 bWAR better than what we actually had this season. Wells and Volstad in AAA for when Garza gets hurt, but hopefully you are a buyer at the deadline and not a seller.

Samardzija/Marmol/Wood/Dotel/Camp/Iowacongaline is now your bullpen.

Bullpens are tricky because WAR doesn't do a good job of measuring leverage. According to WPA, the Cubs' bullpen was seven wins below average last year in WPA. That's *at least* an average bullpen, so I'm calling that a gain of seven wins.

Total cost to the reconstruction of the pitching staff: $10 million. Net gain: 10 wins.

Joe Mather (-2.4 bWAR) should never have been on the bench. As I said, it's total amateur hour to be giving out jobs based on spring training performance. Steve Clevenger (-1.0) should never have broken camp on the MLB roster. Everyone knew (or should have known) that Castillo was the better player. Sappelt should have been in there over Reed Johnson, who never should have been signed. You bring up Rizzo from day one, burn the service time, and put LaHair on the bench, driving out DeWitt. Building the bench properly from Day 1 would have saved us $1 million and according to bWAR conservatively given us 3 wins.

So at this point, I've spent $12.8 million and given us 20 wins. We're up to .500 and I still have about $15 million to spend. Unfortunately, I've picked the low-hanging fruit and it gets a bit trickier from here.

The obvious place to upgrade is RF. Instead of paying DeJesus $4.25 million, I can go out and get a really good corner man. I'll spend the $13 million to get Beltra, a net cost of $8.75 million and a two-win improvement, plus he can play CF in a bench and LaHair shift to the outfield when Byrd falls apart early.

I'm up to 83 wins, I've got about 7 million to spend, and I've gotten us to within five wins of a playoff spot in a season where two of our starting veteran position players inexplicably forgot how to hit and our ace pitcher lost half the season to an elbow injury. I think that proves pretty conclusively that we weren't doomed to failure no matter what we did.

GTherefore, I'll continue to believe in our FO, who has a much longer and better track record within the game of baseball than Gato or Kyle does. And its not an insult, its fact. They are highly respected. Wgy not trust them? Because it comes off as if you think you'd do a vetter job than they are.

Everything you just said could have just as easily applied to Andy MacPhail.

Everything you just said could have just as easily applied to Andy MacPhail.

And I've still put together as many playoff teams as Jed Hoyer has.

well no you havent... when you write up a mock thats a mock... what really happens never goes how u draw it up there are 29 other MLB teams after the same players as you. not every trade happens just cause you ask. its not a video game.

well no you havent... when you write up a mock thats a mock... what really happens never goes how u draw it up there are 29 other MLB teams after the same players as you. not every trade happens just cause you ask. its not a video game.

The unquestioning faith in our front office is more than a little irksome. Yes, Theo has two rings on his resume and a lot of good reputation.

Hoyer and Epstein also left behind teams a combined 34 games under .500 last year. Teams GMed by either Jed Hoyer or Theo Epstein have missed the playoffs for five consecutive seasons. At some point, some of this has to start sticking to them. They can't be Teflon forever just because the prospect rankings go up.